Spending the weekend at a youth hockey tournament gave me the opportunity goalies of all shapes and sizes competing. It's really something to see and it reminded me of a core concept of taking the position. You are the team's backbone. You are the one that the team looks to for strength, calm, intensity. When you let in a bad goal, it's imperative that you maintain that calm and show your team that it's ok. It might make you feel better if you let out a fit of frustration but it may make your team lose just a little bit of confidence in you.

So my son's squirt team is at a tournament this weekend and they are proving to be at the wrong level. They're through the round robin and Tyler hasn't let up a goal yet. The interesting thing is that if you watched them in warm-ups, you'd never know the difference between the teams. There are some serious skills on the teams we're playing. There are two reasons I can see why we're doing so well against the other teams:

1.

This is a video I found on YouTube today re: backside recoveries and other more recent goaltending moves. The position has changed radically in the past ten years and the end of the first video is about as good an explanation as I've seen for why.

So we're keeping Thanksgiving simple this year and focusing on being a family. The bird's in the oven and I have a few minutes to reflect on what I'm truly thankful for. It's been a year full of more change than I can ever remember. It seems that in most every area of my life (work, hockey, community) there has been drastic change. Change is always hard because it upsets the balance of things; it stretches (and stresses) me.

However, in every aspect of change in my life, it's a chosen path that is for the positive.

So I've run into a situation recently (thankfully regarding a team where I'm not the coach) where a parent indicated to the head coach (and to the other parents) that his son wouldn't be coming to a couple games on an upcoming Saturday because he felt it was too far for "exhibition" games and he wanted his son to be rested for a league game on Sunday.

This is wrong to me on a number of levels. It's one thing if a parent wants to approach the coach and voice a concern that perhaps there are too many games (a potentially very valid concern).

IMO, a youth travel hockey team should plan at least one (preferably 2-3) invitational tournament during the season. If it were an advanced team, it would be three that included Columbus Day Weekend, Thanksgiving Weekend and one of the weekends during Christmas Break.

Columbus Day Weekend is a great time for a first tournament because it's early enough in the season to allow the team to bond and it's typically prior to regular season beginning.

I am always amazed at coincidence that makes you think long and hard (in a positive way) about divine guidance.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Bigelow, author of Just Let the Kids Play, and experiencing his presentation about long term player development. (Incidentally, I finally found a movement that corresponds with my own madness; I've been an advocate of long term player development at the expense of short term wins for more than ten years).

The coincidence was that following the event, I began reading Bob's book and who is the first person listed in the credits?

I have a New Year's resolution for coaching this year; it's to more effectively communicate with the parents of the youth hockey teams I coach. I can be an exceptionally frustrating coach for many parents because my approach to coaching youth hockey (and most sports) almost pursues being different.

My sense in sports, as it is in life), is that innovation is not making just making what we've always done better.

I've recently been appointed to the "Grow the Game" committee for New Hampshire Hockey. Our charge is to come up with a strategy for growing youth ice hockey registration in the State of New Hampshire. As such, we were invited to a New England District meeting to meet with our counterparts in other states and Pat Kelleher from USA Hockey headquarters. Really interesting meeting with some great thoughts exchanged.